1. Field of Invention
The invention relates to an auxiliary locking drive for a motor vehicle lock having its own drive housing and being located separately from the vehicle lock in the installed state, being coupled to the vehicle lock by way of a transmission, having a drive motor, and in the mounted state, the drive motor producing a linear driving motion that is transmitted to the vehicle lock by way of the transmission so that the vehicle lock can be transferred from a half-locked state into a main locked state by the driving motion.
2. Description of Related Art
Here, the expression motor vehicle lock is defined as all types of door/hood/trunk or hatch locks.
The vehicle lock is equipped with conventional latching elements, a latch and a ratchet, the ratchet keeping the latch in the main locked position and in the half-locked position. The ratchet is then in the engaged state. The latch can be moved into retaining engagement with a striker or the like which is located on the body. Here, the striker or the like can be assigned to the vehicle lock.
In the course of enhancing the ease of operation, current vehicle locks are provide with various automatic functions. They include, for example, a striker function in which the vehicle lock is transferred by motor from the half-locked state into the main locked state. It is advantageous that the user need move the motor vehicle door only to the half-locked state for locking and that this is possible with comparatively little effort. The counter-pressures of the door seal are not yet acting here. Only moving from the half-locked state into the main locked state is associated with the compression of the door seal, and thus, with a considerable expenditure of force; this takes place by means of an auxiliary locking drive.
Different versions for implementation of the auxiliary locking function are known. One version (German Patent DE 39 35 804 C2 and corresponding U.S. Pat. No. 5,158,330) calls for the striker which interacts with the latch to be moved by a motor for pulling the vehicle door tight. In another version (German Patent Application DE 102 39 734 A1 and corresponding U.S. Patent Application Publication 2004/0135378 A2), the latch can be moved by means of the locking aid by a motor from the half-locked position into the main locked position, and thus, the vehicle lock can be moved altogether from the half-locked state into the main locked state.
In the latter implementation of the auxiliary locking function, the auxiliary locking drive is activated when the latch reaches the half-locked position. For this purpose, there is a control unit in the form of an auxiliary locking control.
In the aforementioned arrangements, it has been found to be disadvantageous that the amount of installation space required in the region of the vehicle lock is undesirably high due to the integration of the auxiliary locking drive; this leads to major structural limitations. Furthermore, the modularity of the arrangement with respect to the implementation of the additional function “locking aid” is low.
In the known auxiliary locking drive which underlies the present invention (German Patent Application DE 10 2006 048 026 A1), the auxiliary locking drive is located separately from the vehicle lock and is coupled to the vehicle lock via a Bowden cable by drive engineering. This solves the problem of installation space in the region of the vehicle lock in a satisfactory manner and corresponds to a modular execution.
In any case, the problem of installation space in the known auxiliary locking drive has simply been shifted. Known auxiliary locking drives which are made in this way are of considerable size; this leads to corresponding installation space problems at the respective site away from the vehicle lock. Furthermore, the known auxiliary locking drives are of considerable weight.